Tournament Preview: New Hampshire Open
June 23rd - 25th, 2022 | Breakfast Hill Golf Club
The second of the two state opens I’ll play this year, the New Hampshire Open is another professional event that is generous enough to round out their field with a smaller group of amateurs. This will not only be the first time I’ve played the NH Open, but also the first time I’ve ever played golf in the state of New Hampshire as far as I can remember.
I’m excited for this one as it is two guaranteed rounds and a possible third if I’m able to make the cut. I added this event to my schedule because I’ve heard it gets a pretty decent field every year and while Breakfast Hill Golf Club is a public course, my research shows it’s a pretty cool track that has a unique layout built for tournament golf.
The Event
Tournament: New Hampshire Open
Golf Course: Breakfast Hill Golf Club
Location: Greenland, NH
Live Scoring: Link Here
The New Hampshire Open is a 54 hole, stroke play event with a top-40 and ties cut after the second round. Looking at the tee sheet, there will be 156 guys starting out on Thursday so only sending 40 through to the final round makes this tournament on the more competitive side in terms of making the cut (for reference, Mass Open was top 50 and ties and a normal PGA Tour event is Top 65 and ties).
In terms of history, it isn’t quite as prestigious as the Mass Open, but they have been running this tournament since 1932 and the list of previous winners has some notable names, including Grayson Murray (2015 winner), who now plays on the PGA Tour (he has been publicly spatting with Kevin Na on Twitter as of late so the name may ring a bell).
The purse is $40k with $10k going to the winner and the remaining money split between the other professionals making the cut. That makes the purse about 20% smaller than the Mass Open payout, with the winner’s share being 33% less. Once again, any amateurs making the cut are only playing for pride and maybe some pro-shop credit (I detailed how payouts work in part 1 of my Hazards Ascent Explained post).
The weather is looking a little iffy at the moment for the early starters on Thursday (including me). It looks like we could get wet out there on day one at least … and then likely dealing with the worst of the wind on day 2 in the afternoon. I’m off at 730am on the first tee on Thursday morning and then again at 1:24pm on Friday off of number ten. There will be (relatively) live scoring provided at the link I’ve provided above in the Event Details section.
The Course
Sadly, I have NOT had the opportunity to go play a practice round at Breakfast Hill. With it being over two hours away and my schedule being packed recently with golf and helping to keep a small child alive, it just didn’t work out to get up there. Clearly, this isn’t ideal but I do take comfort in knowing I have a pretty good track record of playing courses “blind”. Y’all might remember that I hadn’t had a chance to get myself out on Crestwood Country Club prior to the New England Am qualifier there and I finished in second place so there is precedent for me being able to play well the first time I see a course.
The course is about 6500 yards long and playing to a par 70 for the tournament. It is normally a par 72, but they have made two of the par 5’s into par 4’s to toughen it up and make the course play slightly longer. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter because we are all playing the same golf course, but I guess there is a psychological component to making an adjustment like that for a tournament.
I’ve done some research on the course and it sounds like there are quite a few elevation changes (hitting uphill into greens or downhill off tees) and from what I can tell through a few Youtube videos and the Upgame app, it is fairly tight off the tees. That will put a premium on solid driving and game management. It does not appear to be a bomber’s paradise so being a little shorter won’t put me at too much of a disadvantage to the big hitters here.
They also have a lot of exposed rock outcroppings that come into play in a bunch of places. Sounds silly, but I’m kind of excited about that because it reminds me of my former home club, Bonnie Briar, back in New York which is really old school and built way before the concept of blowing up rock with dynamite was a thing. Clearly we will be aiming to avoid hitting the rocks because nothing good can come of it … but at least there will be a visual comfort level as I make my way around the course.
The Field
More good competition this week. Many of the professionals who I saw over at the Mass Open have made the trek north to play here in the NH Open. There are also a larger than usual group of professionals from down south who come up for these Northeast summer events to escape the heat and play some of the classic New England courses. The NH Open in particular is ripe for this archetype because there is no qualifying stage to get into the event (unlike the Mass Open). That makes it easier to enter and theoretically easier to win the $10k purse for the pros.
Guys like Brad Adamonis, James Driscoll, Eric Egloff, Michael Kartrude, Peter Knade, Jim Renner, Jason Thresher, and Michael Vanderlaan are all prime candidates to play well and win. They’ve all done it before, with Brad, Jim, and Jimmy Driscoll being local New England legends that have won more tournaments than I’ve played in.
Driscoll in particular is interesting because he was a can’t-miss kid who grew up in the Northeast and made waves early on as an amateur and then at the start of his professional career. He won the Mass Amateur in 1996 at Myopia Hunt Club by bombing his way around the tight fairways and greens up in South Hamilton. He reached the finals of the 2000 US Amateur at Baltusrol by beating Luke Donald in the semis. He had PGA Tour status for a while and then fell back to earth. It’s been a long time since he has won anything big as far as I can tell, but a guy like that can get going at any point and I’d be surprised if he didn’t contend this week.
I’m actually fortunate enough to be paired with Jim Renner, who has played at least one season on the PGA Tour and multiple others on the Korn Ferry Tour so it will be a great chance to compare my game with someone who has truly done this for a living.
The Preparation
Swing feels good, short game feels good, putting feels good, body feels good … so prep is … good? I’ve worked really hard on all facets of the game since my last competitive round one week ago. I had a lot of good vibes coming off the victory over at Cape Cod Country Club in the Mass Am qualifier and wanted to make sure I bottled the good parts of that round (full swing, game management) and improved on the sh*tty parts (putting!).
I did take one full day off to spend with family on Saturday (we took a fun trip down to Newport), but have put in longer sessions on every other day this week. I’ve worked a lot on making sure I’m getting into the same setup before every single shot I hit and then maintaining a single swing-thought during the swing itself. That thought is very simple: “keep your hips closed”. It doesn’t quite work that way (my hips obviously still open up), but it does allow me to work forward with my upper body better and cover the ball at impact which results in a much more penetrating ball flight.
I’ve also spent a lot of time on putting, just trying to bump up the confidence level a bit on the greens. I sent some videos through to Dom and he identified one minor adjustment that needed to be made with my putter (exiting the putter head a bit lower to the ground), and that has helped during my practice. Aside from technique, I’ve tried to put myself under pressure during drills and create that tournament-like feel.
The one big negative about prep this week is just not having seen the golf course I’ll be playing. I already alluded to it and won’t harp on the negatives here, but while I’m decent at playing courses blind, I’d prefer NOT to. I also haven’t had an opportunity to play ANY holes since last week, instead choosing to spend my time on the range and practice putting green. Well, part choose and part FORCED due to schedules and my home course holding a bunch of tournaments the last couple of days. That can be made up for a bit with performance work on the range, but I’d rather get out there and play some golf in advance of a tournament.
I’m hoping to provide a quick Day 1 recap on Thursday evening like I did with the Mass Open so stay tuned for that. Be sure to follow along on Thursday via the live scoring link I shared above and look out for more frequent updates @hazardsascent on Instagram!